Denise Griep was tired of the meetings and sports practices that pulled her family in different directions. She wanted something that would bring them together, something meaningful.

So, she signed up through her church to help a Somali family who had just arrived in the United States from a refugee camp in Kenya.

Every weekend for the past year, Griep and her husband and three children tutor seven Somali children. Griep’s 16-year-old daughter helps the older Somali boys with algebra. The Grieps also have shopped for school supplies and inflatable mattresses. They have taken the Somali family bowling and invited them over for pizza and a movie.

“You can only coach so many sports teams,” says Griep, who lives in Southwest Minneapolis. “It just seemed like we had the time and the resources to do this. Our kids are learning about Africa and Somalia and a different religion and refugee camps. That’s a whole education in itself. And I always feel like every minute I spend on this is well spent.”

Volunteering can take a backseat in the frenzy of modern family life. Who has time after sports, music lessons and long work hours? At the same time, parenthood propels some people toward volunteering as a way to teach their children compassion and the importance of helping others.

“I think parents are looking for ways to pass on their values in a real hands-on and structured way,” says Jenny Friedman, the Minneapolis author of “The Busy Family’s Guide to Volunteering” and founder of Doing Good, an organization that promotes giving back as a family.

Volunteering with your kids can make children more grateful for what they have, build self-confidence, break down stereotypes and strengthen relationships with siblings and other family members, Friedman says.

As a young mother, Friedman started delivering meals to shut-ins with another mom. At each house, their preschoolers walked to the door clasping a warm lunch. They felt helpful. And the recipients were delighted to be served by a cheerful 3-year-old.

Over the years, Friedman and her three children have cooked together at a homeless shelter, mentored a family with two young girls and packed up a monthly box of food and clothing for a poor family in Mississippi.

“In our society, we tend to be very segregated,” Friedman says. “We tend to spend time with people who are of our own socio-economic level, our own educational level, our own race. And I think it has been very important for my children to have been around all kinds of people. The oldest are in college now, and they are so totally relaxed about people who are totally different from them. It’s given them a different kind of attitude.”

COMPASSION AND MORE

Volunteering can be informal – helping an elderly neighbor shovel snow or bringing lasagna to new parents. But many organizations also welcome families.

At Lyngblomsten Care Center in St. Paul, families visit residents, deliver mail, help with activities and even give manicures.

Shawn Graham of Roseville helps wheel residents to Mass every Wednesday afternoon at Lyngblomsten, along with his four children: Megan, 16; Joey, 12; Christian, 10; and Mary Rose, 7.

“We felt it was important to teach them to have some compassion and realize that there are more important things than just themselves and their toys,” says Graham, who started bringing the oldest children about four years ago.

At first, they were less than enthusiastic.

“It was kind of scary, and there were all these old people, and it kind of creeped me out,” Megan recalls. “But as I’ve gotten to know the residents more, they’re not scary. They’re really sweet. And I’m a lot more comfortable.”

In fact, Megan grew to like it so much she started volunteering an extra weekend a month in the gift shop, where she scoops ice cream and runs the cash register. And she and her brother Joey volunteer every other Saturday at bingo games.

What have they learned besides compassion?

“Some people don’t understand what you’re saying,” Joey says. “But then I started to get used to it, and I realized I had to talk a little bit louder.”

FAMILY VALUES

Many families say volunteering is a great way to pass along family values.

Andy and Darcy Tatham of West St. Paul have been able to share their love for nature and environmental concerns by volunteering with their 9-year-old daughter Anneliese.

“I don’t know if she appreciates the bigger impact of what she’s doing yet,” Andy says. “It’s just plain fun at this point.”

“We don’t preach to her about it,” Darcy adds.

Anneliese has helped reseed native plants along the Mississippi River, made toilet paper nests used to rehabilitate baby birds and handed out fliers to explain why her mother was putting notices on the storm drains in their neighborhood reminding people that water drains directly to the Mississippi River.

Darcy also volunteers with Friends of the Mississippi River to monitor the health of several wetlands in Dakota County and has taken Anneliese along on wetlands tours with a biologist and to a laboratory to look at bugs under microscopes. Usually, she is the only kid around.

Not surprisingly, studies have found people who volunteer as children are more than twice as likely to volunteer as adults.

That proved the case with Doug Dickhausen, who accompanied his parents, Gail and Jim Dickhausen of North St. Paul, when they served meals at a St. Paul neighborhood center in the 1980s.

Now, he organizes his parish’s turn to prepare meals at the Family Service Center, a homeless shelter in Maplewood. He takes along his 10-year-old son, Jonathan.

Dickhausen, his parents and his son were there this month making a huge batch of Grandma Ferne Olson’s chicken and rice hotdish. The adults prep and cook. Since children younger than 14 cannot be in the kitchen, Jonathan wipes off tables and chairs in the dining room or refills the salt and pepper shakers.

“He never complains,” Gail Dickhausen says. “I think he’s learning that there are people who are poor, people who don’t have the money for a home, and his dad, Doug, is a real talker just like me, so I’m sure he’s using these as teaching moments.”

SCHOOL ASSIGNMENT

Some schools and churches are beginning to look for more ways to promote volunteering as a family.

For example, Friedman’s organization has been working with Cornelia Elementary School in Edina, which started sending home a monthly list of 10 volunteer ideas. Families can check off what they do and send the list back. Each time a family does a project, the school adds another paper loop to a chain encircling the cafeteria.

The school also hosted a service fair last fall where families stopped by a half-dozen “stations” to complete an activity. Kids assembled sandwiches for bag lunches at a homeless shelter, for example, or made greeting cards for sick kids.

Sara Hasseltine has been working to incorporate volunteerism into the family programs at her daughter’s school, Centerpoint Elementary School in White Bear Lake.

Before Christmas, a group of parents and children from the school got together and made simple fleece blankets to give to sick and traumatized children. The families gathered again in February to watch a video about Meals on Wheels and put cheerful Valentine’s Day greetings on the bags used to deliver food to homebound people.

“I didn’t think my children were old enough to volunteer,” says Friedman, who has a 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. Now, she plans to get them more involved in working for the common good, starting with simple steps, such as picking up trash every time they visit their local playground this spring.

“I want to let them know they can influence their environment and they have the power to change it and make a difference,” Hasseltine says. “Plus, I want to let them know it just feels good to help other people.”

Maja Beckstrom can be reached at mbeckstrom@pioneerpress. com or 651-228-5295.

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